Barba

BARBA

The child, whose body I have stretched by three feet ever since, had this terrible dream: an old man, with a beard dragging along the road, walked into a land where only children went.
There they were, cheerfully hopping about, climbing trees, rolling down the hills, with singing birds in their hair, and sparkling fish in their eyes…
All at once, they stopped and froze, astounded by the awkward presence, intimidated by the awful shape they had not seen before: an old man.
He, too, stood there still, spellbound by the abundance of youth compressed in a land that no old man seemed to remember having seen…
They all stood in awe and silence.
Yet after a while, the children, too curious and carefree, came up closer to the old man, ran their fingers along the beard and raised their big eyes up to his old, wrinkly face.
Their visions met, and for that second, by a profound and generous gesture of the universe, they were all one. All one.
And just as the old man was about to smile and greet the children with his heartiest of laughs, he choked, took a sharp, deep breath, closed his eyes, and coughed heavily, from the deepest parts of his old body, three times, shooting a cloud of rust over the trees and hills.
When he subsided and opened his eyes, the children were gone…

Hidden in threes and coves, they were already getting old.

TWENTY-SEVEN